To read excerpts, you need to have an account with us. Please log in first.

If you had to do something really good for someone else to remove a curse, but no one could see you, where would you start?

Think how much fun it would be if you were a puff of smoke. If you were a naughty ten year old, you would look at your sister’s diary. If you were a teenage boy, you could drift into the girls’ locker room. If you were a man, wait, if you were a man who had been born centuries ago, and you and your brothers had done a thoughtless deed to a sweet young girl and had a curse put on you, well, drifting around as smoke could become something else.

It did not help if the witch who put the curse on you let you form a small part of your body now and then. You could talk, but that often scared people away, a voice from nowhere. You could produce a hand, maybe one foot, and, yep, that impressed people.

Then, after all the centuries of drifting with forest fires, and campfires, and wherever the wind sent you, there was a woman who closed her eyes and only smelled cinnamon and sandalwood. But you needed to do more than just pleasure her with a hand.